Just a Small Spot

My mom and I were talking today after I got home from a city date with Josh. We were talking about how she has strange pains and has been losing weight without even trying. She even eats fast food at least once a week and still is losing weight pretty quickly. To most, that would be awesome and they wouldn't question it, but my mom isn't most people. Her father (my grandfather) died when she was only 18 from pancreatic cancer. My mom is a smoker and that put her at a high risk for cancer as well. She told me today that when she went for a routine lung scan about 6 months ago, they found a small spot. They said it was too small to biopsy yet, so she would need to come back in about 3 months to check for any growth and go from there. Here we are 6 months later and she still hasn't gone back. With her dad's history of aggressive cancer, it makes me uneasy. I downplayed it and told her should go back, but didn't panic. My dad already has had cancer and is still undergoing regular scans to make sure he's in complete remission. I don't need or want another parent with cancer. My mom didn't inherit the best genes from her mother or father. They both died before the average life expectancy and had health issues. It worries me, but I didn't want to let her see that. She's freaking out enough as it is on her own. I had no idea about the spot until today. It makes me wonder if there's anything else she's hiding regarding her health. With her weight loss she said she feels like she's "wasting away to nothing" while not even trying. Cancer cells deplete the body of nutrients and resources, so the actual healthy tissue don't have much to feed off of. That's why a lot of cancer patients lose an incredible amount of weight in a relatively short period. My mom just went for a full abdominal scan and it came back clean, but the next step is the lungs. It makes me nervous. I have such a long history of cancer in my family that it isn't even funny. Cancer isn't something you can dodge most of the time. My father's side of the family is cursed by breast cancer. My grandmother from that side and all of her sisters had it, and my aunt was diagnosed a couple years ago. It doesn't bode well for me. If my mom has cancer, I don't know what I'll do. We've been talking so much more than we used to; about her childhood, various family issues, her opinions, and even the relationship between her and my father. I'm finally getting to that relationship with her that's like a close friend. We aren't there yet, but I like the direction it's going. I've already dealt with so much loss and pain in my life that I don't know if I can do it again if something were to happen. I've lost more than half my family and a lot of friends, and I miss them all. I don't deal well with loss. I never have. Because of that, I find it hard to let go of things, thus why my room is cluttered. I pray nothing is wrong with my mom and it's just some weird aches and pains, and the spot was just a fluke. I can't lie, I'm freaked out. It seems like every time my world is falling into place, something pops up and happens to knock it off course again.